Category: LookingOutwards-02

Looking Outwards 2 – Generative Art

I really admire the video game “Panoramical” by Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga. It is a very beautiful and immersive experience through a world of stunning visuals and music. The landscapes and music inside the game change based on the player’s input. 

I admire this work of generative art because of its beauty and interactivity. To put it bluntly, a lot of computer generated artworks have interesting concepts but are lacking in the quality of experience they provide. “Panoramical” on the other hand draws you in with otherworldly visuals and sounds. It is otherworldly due to the usage of algorithms, but it is beautiful due to the creators’ sensibilities to colors and sound. Each landscape and how they change is designed with care, and the music is designed to immerse players into the landscape.

“Panoramical” stands out from motion graphics and animated experiences due to its interactivity. Thanks to the creators’ usage of algorithms to  “connect multiple sensory variables to [the player’s] actions” (1), the player actively becomes a part of the experience. 

I think “Panoramical” is a good example of how the infinite possibilities of algorithms working inside the bounds of an artist’s design can create an unique and beautiful experience. 

Work Cited

  1. “Generative Art: Best Examples, Tools & Artists (2020 GUIDE).” AIArtists.org, aiartists.org/generative-art-design.

LO-2-Generative Art

Upon looking through Robert Hodgin’s portfolio, a project that caught my attention was “Star Chart.” This project was completed in April 2020 and is essentially a map of constellations from any time and location. As a statistics major, I study a lot about data so the fact that this project was achieved through the use of astronomical databases piqued my interest. I admire how he was able to take something rather unexciting and imperceptible like a database of numbers and made it into something much more visual and stimulating. This project was a continuation from a previous project of his from 2012 where he plotted about 120,000 different star positions in a 3-D space to mimic the stars surrounding the sun. For this new project, however, he wanted to show the night sky view of the stars so he used stereographic projection, which projects a sphere onto a plane.
Hodgin’s interest in physics and astronomy requires accuracy and precision, which suit perfectly with his methods of using data visualization to create his projects.

Looking Outwards 2: Generative Art

Ian Cheng’s Emissaries is “a trilogy of simulations about cognitive
evolution, past and future, and the ecological conditions that shape
it,” as per the artist’s website. Cheng created the live, CGI
simulations through a video game engine and observed the works from
2015 – 2017 as the game essentially “played itself.” The characters
and creatures within Emissaries play out their lives in open-
ended narratives generated and modeled through predictive technology
usually reserved for forecasting election results or climate change.

Emissaries is a fascinating case study on narrative consciousness,
evolution, and dealing with natural chaos in life. I had the good
fortune of listening to Ian speak about this work when he visited
Carnegie Mellon back in 2017, and I was struck by the sheer complexity
and time he invested into these generative worlds. In order to build
this game and have it play itself over two years, I think Cheng would
have had to feed the algorithm an inordinate amount of data on past
major events, disasters, and research on human psychology so that the
game could generate narratives and characters that accurately reflect
our world.

LO-02

I find artist Manfred Mohr’s Algorithmic Modulations inspirational since it uses simple rotations to make sophisticated visual effects. In the project, lines and color bands are used to present the n-dimensions rotation in 2-dimensions. The color bands have similar colors of watercolor, like light blue and light violet, which are calming. However, lines that come across those bands are of much darker colors, which are nearly back. The contradictory color choices tell us about the artist’s aesthetics and sensibilities.

Mohr. M. (2019). Algorithmic Modulations. http://www.emohr.com/ww4_out.html

According to the artist, the algorithm is written in this way: One diagonal path across a 12-D hypercube is selected randomly, which is then put in 3 angular positions. This diagonal path in three positions represents the initial graphic constellation as the inherent generator of the images. After being rotated in 12-D and projected into 2-D, the diagonal-paths become visible as transparent color bands. A thin horizontal black line is drawn starting from each vertex (of all three diagonal paths), crossing the vertical center of the image and continuing to the opposite side. In addition, for each vertex a slightly thicker horizontal black line is drawn starting from the vertical center of the image and continuing to the negative x-value of the respective vertex (reflection from the vertical center). The rotation in 12-D horizontally modulates the black line construct, whereas its symmetric aspect, creates a graphic counterpoint to the visually floating transparent color bands. In the screen-based work the algorithm randomly changes the colors of the 3 transparent bands and occasionally switches completely to white bands on a grey background. On other occasions the 3 bands transform to full color and while returning to their transparency they are overlayed with a shrinking and slowly fading structure revealing the generating diagonal-paths.

animation – example

LO-2-Generative Art

Fish Tornado by Robert Hodgin

Fish Tornado, an interactive VR experience that puts the user in the center of thousands of Big Eye Trevallie forming a toroidal bait ball, caught my attention. This generative artwork was created by Robert Hodgin and I was admired by how Hodgin wanted to see how close he could come to simulating this phenomenon with code and simulate in the Oculus VR headset. I admired this aspect because I have always wanted to know how a bait ball is formed and by the use of VR, I would be able to experience it directly.

The algorithm generated in this artwork is very cool in a way that the fish is aware of my position in the 3d world. The fish attempts to form a toroidal bait ball around me and I can stand in the center. Also, the fish responds towards me by treating me as a low threat predator and thus prevents the fish from traveling through the camera.

Hodgin further manifests his artistic sensibilities by adding a shark into the simulation. The experience of watching a fish form a toroidal bait ball around me is very relaxing with background music but its calmness breaks apart by an occasional passing of a shark.

Link

Fish Tornado

LO 2

Close up of Wall Drawing 1247

Wall Drawing 1247 is a piece of algorithmic art by prolific artist Sol LeWitt created in 2007. LeWitt was a minimalist who produced a large body of work in the form of written instructions. Wall Drawing 1247 is a large drawing of an X with a gradient effect produced by the systemic layering of graphite scribbles. LeWitt’s work focused heavily on geometry, simplicity, and, sometimes, color. Through his algorithmic works, he expressed his artistic view that the concept is more important than the product.

When I saw this piece for the first time at the MASSMoca I was struck by the dimensionality of it. I saw depth created by a beautiful, smooth gradient. It wasn’t until I immediately assumed that it had been created robotically, or that it was some sort of print. I didn’t know that a carefully grid had been constructed, labelled, and filled in bit by bit by a team of skilled artists scribbling at the wall.

The process of creating the work

LookingOutwards-02: Generative Art

I truly admire “Flow Field #1 – Reinterpreting the Starry Night” (2018) by the software and net artist, LIA. The first thing that I had noticed about this work was that the movement of the flow fields were so hypnotizing. Despite being two-dimensional lines flowing, it showed a lot of smooth feather-like texture and movement. I admired this because I was impressed at how it showed a lot of three-dimensional depth despite its two-dimensinal form. Though I do not know exactly what algorithm was used to create this work, it is said that LIA took the original color palette of Starry Night, and translated the work into her own interpretation with a custom-made computer code using the flow fields technique. This technique reveals the lines and loops of the artwork into these flow fields to present depth and motion throughout the canvas. Based on LIA’s other works as well, it is obvious that this artist enjoys working with lines and shapes, and distorting them in an ethereal manner, where the projects look like a hallucinated and imagined state of mind.  

Flow Fields (Reinterpreting Van Gogh)

Title: “Flow Field #1 – Reinterpreting the Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh”

Artist: LIA

Year of Creation: 2018

LO 2 – generative art : “Please Smile”

When researching generative art, I stumbled upon a piece titled “Please Smile” it is a robotic installation done in 2011 by artist Hye Yeon Nam and the robotics were done by Changhyun Choi along with assistant programmer Sam Mendenhall.
I was instantly drawn to the piece as the concept is very intriguing. The exhibit consists of five robotic skeleton arms which are designed to interact with humans in three different ways. First if no human is in view of the camera the robotic arms stay in the default position if a human comes in view the arms are designed to point at the human following the person if he or she were to move. Finally the third way is if the person were to smile the robot would then wave with all five arms.
The piece sounds simple but, with my knowledge of robotics, it is not the easiest thing to program. I’m very inspired by not only the thought process behind the art but also the execution. The video I watched about this piece showed the robot running very smoothly which must have required a sound program.
There is a clear indication of time effort and creativity that went into this piece making it not only cool to look at but also interactive.
It is clear that the artist had a definite vision going into the project and worked alongside others to make her idea reality.

Hye Yeon Nam - Please Smile, Robotic Installation 2011 - YouTube
pictured here is the piece “Please Smile”

LO2: Generative Art

Rewordable
Generated Cards

Allison Parrish’s work Rewordable is both admirable and inspirational as it lies between the interaction of my two interests: communications design and card games. Rewordable is a card game that uses computation to generate combinations of letters on cards. Similar to Scrabble, the game allows people to earn points by creating words using different combinations of cards. There are a total of 120 one-letter, two-letters, and three-letter cards generated by coding. Although I am unsure if the artwork on the cards is computer-generated, I really admired Parrish’s use of computation in the process of creating her cards, giving it complexity within its aesthetic, and thus, in a sense, making her work a generative art or design piece. To create the design of the card game, Parrish mainly used matrixes and n-gram frequency analysis, which allowed her to come with various letter combinations to put on the cards. Through her algorithm, Parrish created and curated an experience of enjoyment for the target audience. 

Link: http://www.rewordable.com/

http://portfolio.decontextualize.com/

Author: Allison Parrish

Work: Rewordable August, 2017

Inspirational Generative Art

A project or work that I find inspirational is UCRACKING by Marius Matz.
I find these pieces to be inspirational because it was created for the Andy
Warhol Absolut art exchange. These pieces were created for an art exchange event held between Andy Warhol and Absolut vodka, who have had a long time partnership. Absolut partners with hundreds of creators helping them expose their art to the world in their gallery. Matz used subdivision algorithms (also known as cracking), and applied this to 2D and 3D triangle meshes. Watz works with abstract art, specifically visual abstraction through generative software processes. His art follows a certain pattern, of hard-edged geometrical shapes with vivid bright colors. These works range from coded and pure software to projections on buildings and walls, he even 3D prints some of his coded models.

UCracking